Dr Edmonston on Shetland Seals.
Every one familiar with seals is struck with their plaintive, intelligent faces, and any one who has seen the seals from time to time living in the Zoological Gardens must have been pleased with the marks of attention paid by them to their keepers. Dr Edmonston of Balta Sound has published in the "Memoirs of the Wernerian Society"[146] a graphic and valuable paper on the distinctions, history, and hunting of seals in the Shetland Isles. As that gentleman is a native of Unst, and had, when he wrote the Memoir, been for more than twenty years actively engaged in their pursuit, both as an amusement and as a study, we may extract two or three interesting passages.
He remarks (p. 29) on the singular circumstance that so few additions have been made to the list of domestic animals bequeathed to us from remote antiquity, and mentions the practicability of an attempt being made to tame seals; and also says that it is yet to be learned whether they would breed in captivity and remain reclaimed from the wild state. The few instances recorded in books of natural history of tame seals refer to the species called Phoca vitulina, but of the processes of rearing and education we have no details. "The trials," continues Dr Edmonston, "I have made on these points have been equally numerous on the great as on the common seal. By far the most interesting one I ever had was a young male of the barbata species: he was taken by myself from a cave when only a few hours old, and in a day or two became as attached as a dog to me. The varied movements and sounds by which he expressed delight at my presence and regret at my absence were most affecting; these sounds were as like as possible to the inarticulate tones of the human voice. I know no animal capable of displaying more affection than he did, and his temper was the gentlest imaginable. I kept him for four or five weeks, feeding him entirely on warm milk from the cow; in my temporary absence butter-milk was given to him, and he died soon after.
"Another was a female, also of the great seal species, which we captured in a cave when about six weeks old, in October 1830. This individual would never allow herself to be handled but by the person who chiefly had the charge of her, yet even she soon became comparatively familiar.
"It was amusing to see how readily she ascended the stairs, which she often did, intent, as it seemed, on examining every room in the house; on showing towards her signs of displeasure and correction, she descended more rapidly and safely than her awkwardness seemed to promise.
"She was fed from the first on fresh fish alone, and grew and fattened considerably. We had her carried down daily in a hand-barrow to the sea-side, where an old excavation admitting the salt water was abundantly roomy and deep for her recreation and our observation. After sporting and diving for some time she would come ashore, and seemed perfectly to understand the use of the barrow. Often she tried to waddle from the house to the water, or from the latter to her apartment, but finding this fatiguing, and seeing preparations by her chairman, she would of her own accord mount her palanquin, and thus be carried as composedly as any Hindoo princess. By degrees we ventured to let her go fairly into the sea, and she regularly returned after a short interval; but one day during a thick fall of snow she was imprudently let off as usual, and, being decoyed some distance out of sight of the shore by some wild ones which happened to be in the bay at the time, she either could not find her way back or voluntarily decamped.
"She was, we understood, killed very shortly after in a neighbouring inlet. We had kept her about six months, and every moment she was becoming more familiar; we had dubbed her Finna, and she seemed to know her name. Every one that saw her was struck with her appearance.
"The smooth face without external ears—the nose slightly aquiline—the large, dark, and beautiful eye which stood the sternest human gaze, gave to the expression of her countenance such dignity and variety that we all agreed that it really was super-animal. The Scandinavian Scald, with such a mermaid before him, would find in her eye a metaphor so emphatic that he would have no reason to borrow the favourite oriental image of the gazelles from his Caucasian ancestors.
"This remarkable expressiveness and dignity of aspect of the Haff-fish, so superior to all other animals with which the fishermen of Shetland were acquainted, and the human character of his voice, may have procured for him that peculiar respect with which he was regarded by those who lived nearest his domains, and were admitted to most frequent intercourse with him. He was the favourite animal of superstition, and a few tales of him are still current. These, however, are not of much interest or variety, the leading ideas in them being these: That the great seal is a human soul, or a fallen angel in metempsychosis, and that to him who is remarkable for hostility to the phocal race some fatal retribution will ensue. I can easily conceive the feeling of awe with which a fisherman would be impressed when, in the sombre magnificence of some rocky solitude, a great seal suddenly presented himself, for an interview of this kind once occurred to myself.
"I was lying one calm summer day on a rock a little elevated above the water, watching the approach of seals, in a small creek formed by frowning precipices several hundred feet high, near the north point of the Shetland Islands.
"I had patiently waited for two hours, and the scene and the sunshine had thrown me into a kind of reverie, when my companion, who was more awake, arrested my attention. A full-sized female haff-fish was swimming slowly past, within eight yards of my feet, her head askance, and her eyes fixed upon me; the gun, charged with two balls, was immediately pointed. I followed her with the aim for some distance, when she dived without my firing.
"I resolved that this omission should not recur, if she afforded me another opportunity of a shot, which I hardly hoped for, but which actually in a few moments took place. Still I did not fire, until, when at a considerable distance, she was on the eve of diving, and she eluded the shot by springing to a side. Here was really a species of fascination. The wild scene, the near presence and commanding aspect of the splendid animal before me, produced a spellbound impression which, in my sporting experience, I never felt before.
"On reflection, I was delighted that she escaped.
"The younger seals are the more easy to tame, but the more difficult to rear; under a month old they must be fed, and, especially the barbata, almost entirely on milk, and that of the cow seems hardly to agree with them.
"Perhaps their being suckled by a cow fed chiefly on fish, the giving them occasionally a little salt water, and then by degrees inducing them to eat fish, might be the best mode until they attained the age of being sustained on fish alone. In the barbata, to insure rapid taming, it appears to be necessary to capture them before the period of casting the fœtal hair, analogous to what I have observed in the case of the young of water-birds before getting up their first feathers, and when they are entirely covered with the egg down.
"These changes seem connected with a great development of the wild habits, and attachment to, and knowledge of, the localities where they have first seen the light. As the barbata is until this period in reality a land animal, the chief difficulty we have to surmount with it is in the quality of the milk to be given it. The vitulina is essentially an inhabitant of the water from its birth, yet the care of the mother is perhaps for weeks necessary to judge how long and how often it should be on land, and this we can hardly expect to imitate. In the young of this species a few days old, which we have tried to rear, a want of knowledge of this kind of management may have led to failure. I have not attempted to rear them at a greater age.
"The Greenland seal is, I have been informed, occasionally kept for a month or two on board the whalers, and thrives sufficiently well on the flesh of sea-birds. This species appears to bring forth in January, and therefore it is subjected to captivity.
"I know but comparatively little of its capability of being easily tamed; but this quality, of itself, is no evidence of superior intelligence.
"Might it not be easy to induce Greenland shipmasters to bring some of these animals to England, where they would be accessible to the observation of zoologists.
"One mode of attempting to tame them might be to take half-grown animals in a net, or surprise them on land, and then keep them in salt-water ponds in a semi-domestic state: if any of them were pregnant when caught, or could be got to breed, the main difficulty would be overcome."
Long as these extracts are, they possess great interest as being derived from observations on living animals made by one who was a friend of the Duke of Wellington, and was always welcomed by him. His northern Island of Unst is a fine field for studying marine animals. The sweeping currents of the Arctic oceans bring creatures to the quiet voes and sounds. Shetland in spring, summer, and autumn is a favoured locality for the naturalist and painter.